


Found Things

by thawrecka



Series: the one with the wings [2]
Category: NewS (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Eggbabies, M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-12
Updated: 2007-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-20 03:42:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/580939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thawrecka/pseuds/thawrecka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Koyama likes finding things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Found Things

**Author's Note:**

> more fic inspired by the Taipei Con booklet

Koyama likes finding things; pretty things, quirky things, things that need a little tender loving care. He walks out over the land beyond his little cottage as often as he can to find things that need rescuing. He rescues shiny little trinkets exposed to the elements from the rough sand and sun. He rescues lost and hurt animals from the wilderness beyond the city. He even rescued Tegoshi from loneliness.

There's a distinct pleasure in finding things that need to be taken care of, he finds. He likes feeling like he has something to give, even if it's only to an aging pocket watch.

One day, as he strolled across the cool grassy plains that lay beyond his home, he found an especially pleasing assortment of things. He found a ring a lady that sold apples at the market had lost, hidden between the sharp blades of grass. He found a teddy bear, missing an eye, arm near to falling off. Last of all, he found a boy from the land above, half-dried in the sun, messy with bruises.

It was a heavy catch to carry back to his home, ring in his pocket, bear in hand, man awkwardly slung over his shoulder. He made it without losing anything but it was tricky and he nearly dropped his find as he neared the door.

Koyama enjoys cleaning the things he finds, making them shine like new. It was difficult for him to figure which to clean up first. After several moments of pondering he decided to start with the heaviest and so he took to the boy he'd found with eager motions.

He started with the feet first, cleaning them of dirt and grime, of the many tiny bits of the world outside that had lodged themselves into the boy's skin. It was very different from cleaning the limbs of small birds, their gentle claws and intricate skin. The soles of this boy's feet were rough, the skin broken and tender, but his skin became smoother as it got higher on his body.

Koyama moved his way up, removing torn and filthy clothes and patching scraped skin with careful bandaging, wiped the darkness from his skin with a damp cloth. When Koyama cleaned his face and drew the messy hair from his eyes he couldn't tell the boy's age anymore.

Koyama dressed the boy in his own too worn-in clothes, lay him in a warm and comfortable place and left the mess of his back to be fixed after the rest of that day's find had been dealt with. As he sewed a new eye onto the bear, from a spare blue button that didn't quite match the other eye, he felt his attention drifting towards the creature he'd wrapped in old blankets. The boy slept deeply, just too vibrant to look anything but alive.

He couldn't help himself. The wing that lay flopped over the boy's back, the scar that matched it, he couldn't keep himself from looking at them. He moved closer to look at them more deeply and just had to touch. just. once. Koyama lay his finger at the edge where feathers met skin and the boy's eyes flew open.

 

The boy didn't speak. Whether because he couldn't or wouldn't Koyama couldn't tell at that stage but he didn't mind, was happy to fill up the silence with his own voice. It was never quiet, birds chirping outside, the coarse song of the wind and the sounds the boy's body made as he moved it heavily about.

He didn't seem to want to realise that he was injured and shouldn't try to jump about like a healthy animal would.

"I took care of a cat once. He wanted to walk about all the time when he shouldn't, just like you. Do you think that made him heal any faster? No, of course not! Well, if you want to injure yourself any more and stay here longer that's alright with me."

 

He didn't want Koyama to see his back, turning around whenever Koyama entered the room or slipping into the darker edges of the house when he could. He dressed shirt first, wary eyes on Koyama the whole time.

Apart from that he held no modesty, not caring what other parts of him were on display or whether he got blood on the nice wood floor.

Koyama tried to look gentle and harmless, tried to slip his fingers under the blankets so he could slip them onto the floor. The boy wouldn't let them go, obstinately held them over his back as if they were all that held his flesh together.

I've seen you naked and bleeding, he wanted to say. There's no secrets left for your body to keep.

But he didn't. Instead he made tea.

 

"I found this book among some bushes forty kilometres that way," Koyama said, as the boy ran his fingers down the book's weathered spine. "I put up lost and found posters for it but nobody ever claimed it."

Now that the boy was walking he was making himself quite at home in Koyama's humble library, as much a part of the furniture as the glass cabinet Koyama's mother had given him.

"That one," Koyama said, as the boy's fingers trailed onto another book, "I got as a present from a nice old lady when I rescued her dog. It's about lawyers."

The boy fished it out of the shelf and sat with it for hours.

 

Koyama got sick after staying too long in the wet looking for an old hairclip, lost by the girl who sold him fish, and secluded himself in one end of his house. It wouldn't do to let his guest get sick just as he was getting better.

Imprisoned in pink blankets and stuffy clothing, Koyama could only look on enviously as the boy walked around with growing ease and laughing eyes.

"I don't like you any more!" Koyama wailed, but he could see by the look in the boy's eyes that he didn't believe it.

Each day the boy came closer with his teasing face and daring fingers, poking at Koyama in his woolly cocoon.

On the morning Koyama woke up feeling that his sickness had left with the night's breeze he came close enough to touch, close enough that Koyama could pounce on him like a playful puppy. They rolled around until the blankets rolled off, carpeting the floor in a haphazard pattern.

It was said that the secret to getting wounded animals to trust you was to let them come to you. Koyama felt that sometimes being sneaky was preferable and used that opportunity to let his fingers run down the boy's naked back, let them run through the mess of feathers.

Koyama had grown used to what the boy's different noises meant - when he breathed like that he was shocked.

Koyama let his fingers slip through the feathers like a comb, let them map the strange lines of skin. He had to do it before the boy pushed him off, before he put those layers between them.

"Let me," he murmured. "Please."

Koyama wet his fingers and rubbed the boy clean. He let his fingers travel over the mountains of flesh to the accompaniment of hitching breath, louder and louder until it was almost a voice.

 

In the morning the wing had been tucked under the skin with the magic Koyama had forgotten the boy must possess, like something he'd heard of only in books.

Koyama realised the other was almost fully healed and his heart wanted to sing something sad and afraid.

 

Koyama took a morning to do so many of the things he'd been putting off, the making of plans and procuring of objects, leaving Shige alone in the house.

Tegoshi was glad to see him, declaring, "I haven't seen you in so long I thought you might have run away to join the circus."

"Ah, I was preoccupied with things."

"Does Kei-chan have a secret?" Tegoshi gasped, eyes alight with glee. "Tell me! Tell me!"

"But if I tell you it won't be a secret," Koyama said and winked.

"Aw, no fair! You can't even give me a clue?"

"I might have come across a lost bird," Koyama gave, "but I think it might be about to find itself."

 

He was unfolding like the flowers in Koyama's disorganised garden, brightening as the weather grew warm. It was always a little sad when the creatures he found got well enough that he knew soon he'd have to let them go.

 

The boy spoke for the first time at the most surprising of times, a time when Koyama had barely spoken for the whole day and night. Perhaps that was the best time he could find to break his silence. Koyama looked up.

"Your name is Shige?" A name he could wrap his mouth around, a name his lips wanted to form.

"Shige," he wanted to say again and again, and so he did. Held the other close and whispered his name against his ears, wrote it with his fingers against the skin of the other's neck.

Wanted to say it against Shige's mouth. Shige was writing his own words over Koyama's skin, and so Koyama did, let his mouth move as it wanted to.

This was a language they could speak without words, a language with noises of its own. The sticky gasps at the magic slide of fingers over Koyama's skin, the low noises that emitted from Shige's throat. The heavy noises of the things they hit on the way to bed.

They grew wet in the night's heat. They fit together, like finding the right key for a lock. Shige opened him up completely and Koyama closed his mouth with kisses until the night grew cold.

 

When Koyama woke Shige was gone, leaving nothing but a black feather on the couch.

The sun was bright over the morning and the world was almost quiet.

Koyama sighed and set himself to cleaning, righting the chair that had been knocked over, taking the blankets out to wash.

Wild things can't be contained by cages and so Koyama doesn't try, lets them go free even if it makes his heart ache. All things have their own place and must find it.

He smiled and bathed his cat, even though it complained loudly and with scratchy claws. He had hope. Sometimes, he knew, the things he loved best made their way back to him.


End file.
